The effectiveness of different types of pragmatic implications found in commercials to mislead subjects

Abstract

Statements concerning the truthfulness of claims made in 16 tape-recorded commercials about fictitious products were judged by 40 college students. In half of the commercials a claim was directly asserted while in the other half the claims were pragmatically implied. Pragmatic implications are statements that lead a person to believe something that is neither explicitly stated nor necessarily implied. As expected based upon previous research, subjects often responded to implied claims as if they had been directly asserted (particularly by subjects in the short delay group). In addition, differences were found in the effectiveness of four different types of pragmatic implications for misleading subjects.Considerable research has shown that making inferences, whether they are correct or incorrect, plays an important role in language comprehension (Clark and Clark, 1977;Grice, 1967;Howard, 1983). This is because much of the underlying message is often not explicitly stated but must be inferred. Our propensity to make such inferences about what we hear or read, while usually quite beneficial, can under certain circumstances lead us to draw unwarranted conclusions (e.g. Bartlett, 1932;Bransford, Barclay and Franks, 1972;Bransford and Johnson, 1973). One method for examining how people fall prey to making false inferences has been to use sentences involving pragmatic implications.Pragmatic implications are statements that lead a person to believe something that is neither explicitly asserted nor necessarily implied (Brewer, 1977;Harris, 1974Harris, , 1977Harris and Monaco, 1978). This presumably occurs because of an interaction between the actual input of the message and the person's knowledge of the world. For example, the statement 'The karate champion hit the cinder block' pragmatically implies that the block was broken (Brewer, 1977). However, this unwarranted inference would not have happened if the word 'swimming' was substituted for the word 'karate'. This is in contrast to a logical implication in which information is necessarily implied. An example of a logical implication is 'John forced Bill to rob the bank', which necessarily implies that Bill robbed the bank (Harris and Monaco, 1978). ~ A copy of the complete text of each commercial and the accompanying test statements can be obtained from the first author. A shorter version of this paper was presented as a poster at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Baltimore, 1984. Reprint requests should be sent to

Implicature and Question Types of Police Interrogation: An Analysis of Communication in a Theft Case

“…The issue of pragmatic implication has been extensively researched, especially about advertising (Searleman and Carter, 1988) and information processing and memory (Brewer, 1977;Chan, and McDermott, 2006). Even though most studies have involved adults, some evidence suggests that kids and teenagers "hear" inferences as well as remember them as claims (that weren't spoken).…”

Deception by Implication: A Typology of Truthful but Misleading Advertising and Labeling Claims

“…Few researchers have examined differences between different pragmatic implications in misleading consumers. In one study, Searleman and Carter (1988) examine four types of pragmatic implication: juxtaposing imperative statements (e.g., “Get a good night's sleep. Buy Dreamon Sleeping Pills”), using comparative adjectives without stating the qualifier (e.g., “Lackluster Floor Polish gives a floor a brighter shine”), using hedge words (e.g., “Ty-One-On pain reliever may help get rid of those headaches”), and reporting of piecemeal survey evidence (e.g., “John Doe Jeans are available in more colors than Gloria Vanderbilt's, are more sleekly styled than Sergio Valenti's, and are less expensive than Cheryl Tiegs”).…”